Archive for the “design” Category

The Sunday night was spent with a jeweller’s saw, needle files, a nice mother of pearl shell blank and a lot of patience.

I ended up with a nice logo to inlay into the headstock:

MOP headstock logo

The original sketch for the head stock was just that and I never really cared for it. It’s funny how something as simple as this can be so difficult to make into something presentable.

Of course, I could have simply stuck with a straight Martin peghead, or a variation such as those done by Collings, Santa Cruz, and the likes:

The looks of the straight pegheads are appealing to me, especially the slender ones like the Bourgeois. But because this OM has to end up looking like something I made, I opted for a slender, but different design:

Over all, it came out pretty nicely, but the curves may need some tweaking. I’ll take the jig with me to the next buildiing session to see if it’s useable.

Now of course, a nice peg head can’t do without a nice bit of abalone of mother-of-pearl inlay. I cut the capital N earlier to get a bit of a feel for the material, but like with the head stock itself, I feel I could do better.

One option I’m seriously considering is using a banner like I drew in the picture above. That would require doing a bit of pearl engraving, which I’ve been wanting to try since I read this aricle about the subject in the StewMac weekly newsletter some time ago.

The other option is to take contact some of the pearl suppliers who do custom CNC cut pearl. I like this option because it would allow for some really nice lettering/design to be inlaid. Difficult decision.

Although I’m roughly following Alex Willis’ book Step-by-Step Guitar Making I want my OM to have some Martin-like looks, so I won’t use the bridge and headstock shape used in the book’s plan.

I’m considering an ebony pyramid bridge because I like the vintage look.

While browsing around I came across Charles A. Hoffman’s page showing how he makes them. Being a complete wood working novice I wonder if it is a good idea… if someone like Hoffman says they’re difficult to produce then I’m getting slightly worried. Something to think about.

The last few days I spent some time looking at the different headstock designs of flattops. Because it seems a bad idea to over-complicate things on this first project, I came up with something that looks manageable on paper.

I’m not much of an artist, so bear with me, but the basic idea should be just about clear. I may end up making it a little narrower.

The inlay will be a capital N (as seen in the banner image above) in mother of pearl. I ordered some shell material from Andy de Paule at Luthiers Supplies which should be here in a week or so. Reading about inlay and techniques on inlay.com and in the Larry Robinson’s book The Art of Inlay made me decide the best thing to start with was white mother of pearl, because it’s the least expensive and easiest to cut. In theory…